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Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church), NB - In a pre-dawn attack on June 1, 20 Canadian fisheries officials in 8 vessels, accompanied by 15 police officers in 2 vessels and 4 cruisers on-shore, confiscated 35 lobster traps which had been set by Mi'kmaq fishers in accordance with the Esgenoopetitj (es-guh-NO-buh-ditch) First Nation's conservation plan. Despite this attempt to break the spirit of the Mi'kmaq community, men and women from Esgenoopetitj immediately returned to the water to set more traps. Seeing the flotilla of vessels at dawn, one Aboriginal fisher said, "It looks like a war zone. This is so sad. It doesn't seem to matter what the Supreme Court says. They don't want us to have anything that they have got. One lobster for us is too many."

A police officer asked one of the Mi'kmaq people on shore, "Why are writing down my license number?" A woman replied, "If someone robbed you, wouldn't you write down their number? Why are you stealing food from our children? It's like your destruction of the buffalo all over."

Another fisher said, "They can't break our spirit. We are going to keep fishing. So are the other reserves." Within four hours, several fishers began setting more traps marked with First Nations conservation tags. Mi'kmaq fishers have been setting traps under a plan approved by the Esgenoopetitj Fish and Wildlife Commission. In so doing, they have exercised their treaty right to fish commercially which was upheld by Canada's Supreme Court in last fall's "Marshall" decision. However the Canadian government refuses to recognize the right of First Nations to regulate their own fisheries and insists on imposing Canada's regulations unilaterally. This denies the nation-to-nation basis on which the treaties were originally negotiated.

Since May 6, in three separate incidents, Canadian fisheries officials have used a single vessel to seize the few Mi'kmaq traps which had been set under First Nation authority. Today's federal assault on the Aboriginal fishery was on a far larger scale than anything seen before in the community. It also distracted federal officials from monitoring hundreds of thousands of traps currently set by other fishers under Canada's fish management plan.

Christian Peacemaker Teams has maintained a monitoring and violence reduction presence in Esgenoopetitj since April 4. Current team members are Rey Lopez (Manila, Philippines), Barb Martens (Ruthven ON), Doug Pritchard (Toronto ON), Janet Shoemaker (Goshen IN), and Lena Siegers (Blyth ON).